THE ORLANDO FURIOSO.
_Orlando Furioso_ and _Divina Commedia_--Ariosto expresses the
Renaissance as Dante the Middle Ages--Definition of Romantic, Heroic,
Burlesque, Heroic-comic, and Satiric Poems--Ariosto's Bias toward
Romance--Sense of Beauty in the _Cinque Cento_--Choice of Boiardo's
unfinished Theme--The Propriety of this Choice--Ariosto's Irony and
Humor--The Subject of the _Furioso_--Siege of Paris--Orlando's
Madness--Loves of Ruggiero and Bradamante--Flattery of the House of
Este--The World of Chivalry--Ariosto's Delight in the Creatures of his
Fancy--Close Structure of the Poem--Exaggeration of Motives--Power of
Picture-painting--Faculty of Vision--Minute Description--Rhetorical
Amplification--Rapidity of Movement--Solidity--Nicety of Ethical
Analysis--The Introductions to the Cantos--Episodes and
_Novelle_--Imitations of the Classics--Power of Appropriation and
Transmutation--Irony--Astolfo's Journey to the Moon--Ariosto's
Portrait--S. Michael in the Monastery--The Cave of Sleep--Humor--Pathos
and Sublimity--Olimpia and Bireno--Conception of Female Character--The
Heroines--Passion and Love--Ariosto's Morality--His Style--The
Epithet of Divine--Exquisite Finish--Ariosto and Tasso--Little
Landscape-Painting--Similes--Realism--Adaptation of Homeric
Images--Ariosto's Relation to his Age 1